Browsing the Internet has become a commonplace experience in Western Culture. Hundreds of millions of pages of Internet content are downloaded each day. However, the vast majority of Internet sites are composed in English, with many others available in more popular languages such as French, German and Chinese, to name a few. When the person viewing a web page, or other Internet content is not well versed in English, for example, they are not able to make use of that content and are cut-off from vast amounts of information. Similarly, someone fluent in English may be able to locate much needed information, but if the content is in a foreign language it may be of limited use or, worse, no use at all.
Word-by-word and even paragraph level translators are available for a limited number of languages on the web. The process for using them is tedious. The content must be copied, a translation web site found and opened, the text pasted into the translation web site, a selection of ‘to’ and ‘from’ language made and the process started. he user must then correlate the translation to that portion of the original web site to discern the meaning. Standalone translation devices are also available but also suffer from some of the same limitations as above, where text must be typed or pasted into the device before matching words or phrases in the other language are displayed.